When you visit a zoological collection in a natural history museum, you come across two distinct types of specimen preservation: wet and
dry. Dry specimens are typically composed of just skin or just bones;
birds, mammals, and most insects are most commonly stored dry. Wet
specimens include those stored in ethanol, formalin, a mixture of the
two, glycerol, and various other liquid chemicals; reptiles, amphibians,
fish, whole mammals (i.e. more than just skin or bones), and most
non-insect invertebrates are stored wet.

Wet storage has serious
advantages. It preserves the whole body of the animal, allowing a great
deal more information to be extracted than just a study skin. It allows a
better understanding of the morphology of an animal. And it requires a
lot less prep than dry storage. But it can still be a bit temperamental.

I have wanted to write a long post about the methods we use at my museum
to prepare animals, firstly to provide some guidelines for those of you
who have dead animals in your freezers that you want to prepare for
your own collections, and second to give an insight into the inner
workings of museum collections.

It turns out that Christmas trees are tasty snacks for elephants. Each year, German zoos will feed unsold Christmas trees to their elephants. The trees are donated by the tree sellers, who would otherwise throw them away. Germany’s Spiegel Online spoke to Thomas Kauffels, director of the Opel Zoo near Frankfurt:

"Elephants like to eat wood, it’s important for their digestion because it gives them roughage, especially in winter when there aren’t many leaves on the trees. We fed them one or two trees each per day. If we gave them 10 at a time they’d get picky and would only eat the tips.

Our elephants like the trees. I certainly haven’t had any complaints.”

Elephants munch on Christmas trees in their enclosure at Berlin’s Zoologischer Garten zoo on January 4, 2013 in Berlin, Germany. Traditionally, the animals get in the first week of the year leftover Christmas trees.

I supposed that you lived near Spandau according to your fic ;) I lived in Tiergarten less than 200 meters from Hauptbahnhof or formerly known as Lehrter Bahnhof. Thanks to your fic I so miss Berlin right now ;) I moved away in 2008.

Well, I didn’t spend much time there - I know Charlottenburg well, and the areas around Zoologischer Garten, the Hauptbahnhof, and Alexanderplatz. And when I was there the first time I was staying near Ostkreuz and I went back to visit the area once. Definitely a different feeling than the west, for sure! I also have a couple of singer friends who live in Prenzlauerberg, so I know that bit, too. It’s a big city, hard to get to know is just a few months! I love it and miss it, too, though! Setting part of a story there was a way to spend some time there again, in a way. :)